Supposedly this law is being passed to stop the growth in popularity of teenaged thugs taping their own acts of random violence for entertainment purposes -- such as "happy-slapping," just walking up to a stranger and punching or slapping him while the cell-phone camera takes it all in.

And yet, France being France, I'm sure the law is 90% there to appease a union. In this case, of "professional journalists" feeling a bit threatened.

Former French Prime Minister Raymon Barre has sparked an uproar within the Jewish community after accusing “the Jewish lobby” of making “a scapegoat” of Maurice Papon, a French senior official who signed deportation orders for hundreds of Jews in the Bordeaux region during WWII.

In an interview last week with France Culture, a state-run radio station, Barre also said that “opposing the deportation of Jews had not been a matter of “major national interest.”

...

A senior official under the wartime Vichy government, Papon was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1998 for his role in organising the deportation of hundreds to Nazi extermination camps.

During his six-month trial, the longest in French history, Papon came to symbolize France’s collaboration with the Nazis.